Pete Townshend, noted windmill guitarist and child pornography investigator, has called Apple's iTunes a "digital vampire", likened it to big-bucks bailout beneficiary Northern Rock, and admitted that yes, he did once want to cut Steve Jobs' balls off.
Townsend managed that invective triptych while delivering the inaugural John …

durr

Good music is good music however it was recorded

"Plus if you have ever paid for recording studio time et al then you would know why they need an income (and no a laptop[1], some line 6 kit & a £200 microphone doesn't really cut it)"

Well there's your problen should have used a Tascam or Fostex instead of Line 6 kit to create another Bruce Springsteen's 'Nebraska' ...... or maybe it's the quality of the the music that counts instead of the kit it's recorded on.

@ YP

The way it works for small artists

You join ASCAP or BMI. The radio stations may or may not ever play your songs -- but the way the ratings are calculated, if they did, you'll never know.

At the end of the year, you'll get a letter to the effect of: "We worked very hard for you to ensure that you got your fair share. Your share of performance royalties is $30. Your membership dues are $100. You now owe us $70. Please remit."

[sarc]However, they *do* have to pay for some very nice offices, so I suppose the gouging is entirely necessary. [/sarc]

In the meantime, if some restaurant will be nice to you and play your music in hopes of selling your CD's, ASCAP or BMI lawyers will extort $700/month in royalties out of them. Of which you'll see the aforementioned -$70, even though EVERY SINGLE SONG PLAYED is yours.

I agree with Mr. Townshend. Some balls need to be cut off -- however, he and I differ on the choice between a dead man and some overpriced lawyers who've stumbled on a scheme to make extortion legal. Until then, Non-ASCAP/BMI and damned proud of it. If they try to hassle my friends, we prosecute for theft.

Would you?

+1 for IT Crowd

After going to the Louvre with my camera, I saved millions of dollars not "buying" all those priceless paintings, I can look at them whenever I like.

Boo-hoo artists, to me it's simple; If you want to get paid, perform a show. I get up every day and go to work, to make money, and so can you. Don't like people downloading your music, don't record it in a loseless audio format and try to charge people $10-$20 dollars for it, only perform it live.

I'm really sorry that your racket is almost over, you had a good run, now work everyday like the rest of us. People that are really "artists" will make music whether or not anyone ever hears it, and if they want to "share" it with people they will, and if they want to get paid for entertaining, then perform it live, or sell it for nickels. Would you rather make ten million nickels, or a thousand dollars?

Only a few artists ever "get rich" from recorded music, but almost all the record executives do.

Rampant self publicist talks bollocks

Nobody care about Pete Townshend any more. I doubt that most of da yoof even know who he is. He's been an irrelevance since the sixties. So, had he not invoked the spectre of Apple, this speech would have been ignored. Let's not give him the oxygen he's seeking. He's just trolling.

Stop stropping

If he does not like iTunes then he can always remove his material from the catalogue. Will that improve his income ?

If he does not like the 30% iTunes take he can try to negotiate a better deal and when they won't budge stop selling through iTunes.

I assume that Mr Townshend also approves of Paul McCartney's efforts to help starving old rock stars by increasing the copyright term to 70 years -- thus hindering new artists from reusing some of the old material into something new and exciting -- better to allow those who already have than allow the new who have not a chance.

If he is lacking in income maybe he ought to publish something new, that people will want to buy, rather than relying on regurgitating ancient stuff -- I would like to receive royalties for code that I wrote in my youth!

iTunes takes a lot less than 30% for music. IIRC it's substantially under 10%. The record companies take the lion's share (as per usual).

Really Pete, it's the record companies that are the vampires. They do very little of value in this day and age. You should be thanking iTunes for being a relatively level playing field. And, although you can't directly self-publish to iTunes, there are a multitude of aggregators out there who will publish your song for a few $ per year.

"Apple has agreed to pay each music label between $25 million to $50 million for their services. The music labels will then share the cost with Apple; 30% will go to Apple, 12% will go to the music publishers, and the remaining will be left to the labels to pay out their artists"

iTunes is just another vendor

iTunes is just another vendor. They sell singles or albums and they sell them under the terms offered by the publisher. If the artists aren't seeing any windfall, then it is the middle men that are at fault at not iTunes. Apple is simply chasing the market.

iTunes is no more or less vampiric than Virgin Megastore.

The labels are the actual villain in this piece and always have been. If Apple has gained any power here, than the labels have given it to them.

but but

> rather than critiquing soundbites pulled out of context.

I read the transcript. In context he comes off as an even bigger twat.

Townshend's implication that John Peel was some arbiter of musical talent acting as gate keeper to make sure that the public only listened to high quality saleable material probably has the big man at 20,000 rpm in his coffin.....

Betting term

Wrong target

If Apple is leeching off the artists, it isn't terribly effective. Apple's accounts indicate the sale of music is only showing a very minor profit, and most of the revenue is simply paying the labels and covering the overheads of running the store. It seems to me that the real profits are going into someone else's pocket, i.e. Pete hasn't tracked down the real vampire.

Apple take 30%, pass on the rest

Apple take 30% of the sales. The 70% remainder gets passed up the chain. The "paying the labels" etc would come from the 70% surely?

Whilst Apple may claim that the 30% take only just covers the running of the store, you have to realise that the existence of the store, with the music on it, helps sell the iPhone/iPod etc - which is where a greater profit lies. Also, it's not difficult to do perfectly legal creative accounting which allows you to 'hide' profit by assigning costs creatively (e.g. the iTunes store costs may also include their entire data centre costs, partly used for iTunes, but also associated with the back-end iPhone activation and monitoring - maybe even some other iPhone services - MobileMe/iCloud? - something they'd have had to pay for without the iTunes store selling music).

Four kinds of lies

Hmmmm

"you have to realise that the existence of the store, with the music on it, helps sell the iPhone/iPod etc - which is where a greater profit lies"

Yes, but that profit does not belong to the musician, it belongs to Apple.

However, even if Apple were "creaming" all of the 30% as pure profit, doesn't that mean Mr Townsend et al are getting 70% of something that wasn't being paid for at all before, in return for doing no extra work at all?

I wish someone would take the work I did 30 years ago, sell it to a load of people and throw 70% of the profit my way....

But iTunes is just a big record shop.

Whilst it would be nice it's not strictly their job to nurture talent. Thats what record companies are supposed to do. Well at least they used to. They're the ones who would traditionally send out the ANR men. I guess that roll has now been taken over by Simon Cowell.

And whilst on the subject of record shops, both iTunes and Amazon have a vast selections of obscure music which was never available from your local high street store. At least musicians now have a global outlet where they can sell their work. On iTunes you can even get Thy Gospel by Stian Westerhus for christ sakes.

Apologies in advance for the pedancy...

Am I missing something here? I thought iTunes was more like HMV than EMI or Bluurg, so I don't understand why Apple should be bringing on talent.

As for freeloaders, I am sort of with him on that one. If people do not buy the music then the band cannot fund a tour. And I assume a record label isn't going to fund a tour if the record sells are poor.

Cannot fund a tour???

You *must* be joking - ticket prices for PT types are in the £50 - £250 league - tours are where these people *make* money, not spend it. Not only are tours self-funding, they make the bands about $5mil a head. well, if you're a Townshend or a Jagger or a Van Morrison that is. Everyone else gets scale I bet.